Chapter Text
The oil lamp was dying.
Its flame thinned and thickened in uneven pulses, as if even fire had grown tired of enduring the stagnant air of the tower chamber.
The stone walls swallowed warmth. They swallowed the sound. They swallowed the sense of time itself.
“Shaula, that’s enough for today.”
The white-haired man did not look up from the parchment scattered across the desk. Ink had dried in uneven streaks where his hand had paused too long between thoughts.
Columns of calculations filled the pages. Dates, probabilities, branching outcomes and much more.
Across from him, leaning so far over the desk that her long brown hair almost reached the paper Shaula pouted dramatically.
“But Master,” she whined, her unusual eyes glittering in the lamplight, “you were just getting to the good part!”
The white-haired man turned his head and gazed outside the narrow window, the desert stretched seemingly infinitely beneath a silver moon. The dunes looked soft from above, like waves frozen mid-motion, but he knew better. The sand was merciless. It buried everything eventually.
He gathered the papers into a neat stack, tapping them twice against the wood.
His movements were precise. Controlled.
His hand drifted to his right eye. Colorless. Sightless.
He pressed his fingers against the lid and rubbed slowly. A mark of blindness? A mark of failure? Or perhaps a price paid for knowledge?
“I’m tired,” he said. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”
Shaula tilted her head, then placed both hands against her chest in exaggerated temptation.
“If Master is tired,” she purred, leaning closer, “you could always sleep with me~”
He didn’t sigh. He didn’t scold loudly.
He only said, “Shaula. Stop.”
There was no irritation in his voice. Just a habit.
She pouted and spun in place, arms crossed.
“Being rejected so bluntly is so mean! You’re a bully and a meanie, Master!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. Goodnight.”
He stood, chair scraping softly against stone, and walked toward the narrow doorway leading to his chamber.
Behind him, her voice lowered to a whisper.
“Hehe… if Master is asleep, I’ll just sneak into his bed anyway. He can’t stop me.”
From beyond the doorway came his muffled reply.
“I heard that.”
“…Ugh! Fine! Not today!”
“Today” being the key word in that sentence caused Subaru to sigh a little. As Shaula started walking towards her room she whispered a sentence to herself.
“Maybe tomorrow…definatly tomorrow.”
A mischievous smile appeared on her face as she began happily skipping towards her room, her footsteps retreated down the corridor, echoing briefly before being consumed by the tower’s silence.
Silence returned fully.
Inside his chamber, he laid on the narrow bed without undressing, he only took off his shoes so as to not dirty the bed. His hands rested flat against the sheets, fingers spread as though bracing against something unseen.
The ceiling above him was cracked. He had memorized every fracture.
“I finally made a plan that might work against Reinhard.”
The name settled heavily in the room.
Even alone, he did not speak it lightly.
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’ll fail.”
A faint smile touched his lips.
“But even one percent is enough.”
He closed his good eye.
“If it brings me closer to getting Subaru Natsuki back.”
His fingers curled into the sheets. The thought came, as it sometimes did in the quiet hours between exhaustion and sleep: Why am I doing this?
For a fleeting moment, the room felt larger. Emptier.
But as always, the voices followed.
“You need to get Subaru Natsuki back!” Emilia’s voice said.
“Barasu can fix everything!” Ram’s voice continued.
They were not real. They never were, somewhere deep inside maybe he knew it too. His friends, all shouting in unison, desperate, insistent.
And just like that, doubt dissolved.
“I’ll get you back,” he whispered into the darkness. “Even if it’s the last thing I do.”
He turned towards the lantern and blew until it went out.
Darkness swallowed the tower whole.
And as he closed his other eye the thoughts still linger.
On a regular day he spent hours just thinking, his insomnia getting worse every night.
But today wasn’t a regular day. He actually felt very tired. As he felt himself drift away he lost consciousness.
He opened his eyes to find himself in a dark place, every direction he looked he saw an infinitely stretching void.
“...!?”
He tried to speak only for his mouth to not move. But before he could panic he heard a girl’s voice in his ear. A voice he had heard before. But now an intense, almost painful feeling of love was held to the bearer.
“I love you.”
- ●●●●●●●●●
The scent of fresh appas hit him first. Then the warm sunrays on his skin. And lastly the wind rustling his hair.
Warm. Sweet. Real.
“So, are you buying or not? If not, move along. I don’t like window-shoppers.”
“…Huh?”
His eyes snapped fully open. Stone streets. Colorful awnings flapping in a mild breeze. Merchants shouting over one another. The distant toll of a bell tower ringing the hour.
He stood in the middle of a bustling marketplace.
His heart did not begin racing immediately. Instead, there was a pause, a suspended second where his mind attempted to reject the evidence of his senses.
This wasn’t possible. This was… The royal capital of Lugunica.
The sky above was clear blue. The air carried the scent of bread and livestock and too many bodies in too small a space.
In a situation so illogical as this, Subaru couldn’t help but state the obvious.
“This… isn’t my room.”
His voice sounded smaller than he intended. A cart rolled past him, wheels clattering over uneven stone. Someone bumped his shoulder and muttered an annoyed apology. The world did not blur like a dream.It didn't flicker. It persisted.
His breathing grew shallower and quicker. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
His instincts screamed at him. Every survival sense he had honed over years was wailing.
“I have to get away.”
He ran.
Past confused pedestrians. Past a stall where a woman dropped a basket of fruit in surprise. Through narrow streets that seemed both unfamiliar and terrifyingly familiar. Each turn tightened something in his chest.Each step felt so real, this was no dream.He turned into an alley without thinking.
And suddenly stopped.
The walls here were brick, darker from years of shade. Moss crept along the lower edges. A wooden crate sat in the corner up some steps.
He knew this place. But from when? His thoughts fractured. Pain exploded behind his eyes. It was not just a headache. It was not just dizziness. It felt like something was forcing its way outward from inside his skull.
“My head…!”
He dropped to one knee, fingers digging into his temples in fear that his head would pop open.
“It’s never exploded before… right?”
The pressure intensified.
Cracks of light burst across his vision. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. Something hot surged up his throat. He coughed violently. Vile vomit mixed with blood splattered across the stone beneath him. It felt like every atom in his body was being ripped apart into a million pieces.
“AHHHHH—!”
His scream ricocheted off the brick walls, painful and animalistic.
For one terrifying instant, he was certain his skull would split open.
Then…
Silence.
The pain vanished as abruptly as it had come. He remained kneeling, trembling, breath hitching in uneven pulls, still feeling the aftermath. Tears streamed down his face without his permission.
But none of that mattered to him right now.
“I remember.”
The words came out hoarse.
Images flooded him.
A silver-haired girl reaching out her hand.
A blue-haired maid smiling softly.
A merchant with sharp eyes and sharper loyalty.
A beastman baring his fangs in defiance.
A clown in a blue robe smiling confidently.
The mansion.
The sanctuary.
Blood.
Deaths.
Victories.
Failures.
“This isn’t a dream.”
He forced himself upright. His legs shaked felt hollow.
“I’m Subaru Natsuki!”
The name felt foreign on his tongue, as if he just said the name of someone he hadn’t seen in years.
“I did it.”
Relief and horror collided in his chest.
“But how? This is…”
He stopped mid-sentence just trying to say the correct word.
“...absurd. It’s completely and utterly absurd. Why now? Why today? Who did this? The strongest people I can think of are Reinhard and Satella. But Reinhard can’t manipulate time no matter how much he wants, which leaves Satella. But I’m still… I should be happy but I’m just left feeling frustrated, why now? Why now of all times?”
Subaru found himself repeating his questions in frustration.
“Why trample on all of my hard work just to reset me back to the beginning and hand them to me! It would be better just to not give me the memories and let me complete my plan because then I would feel accomplished but now I just feel frustrated, I had no input on this at all. Now it just feels like I wasted those years for nothing!”
Subaru looked at the sky above him only to see a blue sky, and took a deep breath regaining his composure and thinking tactically, like all the times he had done before.
“Let’s just calm down for a moment. This is what I wanted, I got back my memories now, not how I wanted it to be, but that doesn’t matter. Now I should–”
“Hey, are you deaf!?”
"Huh?"
Subaru turned around to notice three thugs looking at him. Due to his recent return of memories he recognized who they were.
“Are you deaf!? We said that you should give us all your money!” The short guy said.
“Really?”
“Yes, hand it over now!” Rachins said as he took out his knives.
Subaru readied his fists.
“Aww, what are you gonna do?” Rachins said, taunting him.
Suddenly Subaru rushed Rachins and punched him in the face and took his knives.
"My hand hurts more than expected."
Subaru said in his familiar cold voice.
And that's where Subaru does something completely unpredictable. Gaston and Camberley froze in fear as they saw Subaru slice Rachin's throat open. His body got covered in blood and then he turned to Camberley as if nothing happened. And for Subaru that was indeed the case.
Several thousand lives had been ended at his hands, adding one more is like adding a water drop to the ocean. It changed nothing.
Subaru slowly walked towards Camberley each step feeling louder than the last.
“Get away from me! You’re a monster!”
Camberley had tears in his eyes as he slowly backed up against the wall. Subaru continued walking while speaking in his cold monotonous voice.
“That, I know”
Perhaps a tactical move or a move of pure cruelty, Subaru went for Gaston first who was still frozen in fear.
“Hgh!”
Gaston let out a sound compared to a scared dog as Subaru approached him and dug one of Rachin's knives deep into his neck. Before turning to Camberley again.
Camberley seemed to regain control of himself in this vital moment and began screaming.
“HELP, ANYONE, PLEASE HELP ME!!!” Camberley screamed as hard as he could.
No sooner than that did Subaru blink and he was kneeling over his own blood.
“Is this…mine?!” Subaru thought before checking his stomach.
After finding nothing there he checked all over the rest of his body but found nothing. Not even a scratch.
“Hey, hand over everything you got!”
Subaru stood up and turned around. Three alive thugs stood before him.
“This-h-how? I killed them.” Subaru thought.
Only then did he feel the taste of blood and vomit in his mouth.
“So this is Return By Death?”
Subaru's mouth curved into a cursed smile as he started to think.
“This must be the checkpoint, but resetting back to the checkpoint must’ve meant that I died? How? I didn’t feel anything, who is strong enough to kill me painlessly in the blink of an eye? The only person that comes to mind is Rein-...Reinhard! I forgot that he is around here, I was so caught up being so angry at how I gained Subaru’s memories that I forgot to use them.” Subaru continued to think as he put two and two together.
“Are you deaf? Hand over everything you have.”
“I have to call Reinhard. No, Subaru can do anything. I can do this.”
“Aww what are you going to do? Last time I checked, it's 3 v 1 and you're unarmed.”
“Even with that you're at a disadvantage.”
Subaru hit Rachins in the face and as he fell down Subaru took his knives.
“See?”
Gaston was clenching his fists as if he was about to charge into the fight. Subaru with his years of experience instantly noticed and pointed the tip of a knife towards him.
“You have a future, don't lose it.”
“Screw it! Gaston, let's run!!”
Gaston ran right away to Rachins’ unconscious body and threw him over his shoulder as he and Camberley ran away.
“Now that they are gone, she should arrive any minute now.”
Just as those words exited his mouth he could see someone entering the alleyway. Her blond hair swayed in the wind as she was rapidly running.
“Hey, move out of the way!”
Subaru did as asked and moved to the side of the alley letting the girl move by.
“Thanks bro, live strong!”
“No worries, Felt.”
Before Subaru could hear Felt’s response she had already rounded the corner and disappeared from view, but Subaru could imagine it being filled with confusion and bewilderment.
“That went smoothly, now the second part.”
That's when a second person entered the alley. It was a girl, but now a silver-haired one with strangely pointed ears.
“Hey, did you see someone running through here!?”
“Ahh, yeah I did. It was a blonde girl named Felt, she lives in the slums.”
“How do you know her name?”
“Felt is very famous in the slums, she gets paid to steal stuff from others.”
“Oh, Well, thanks for telling me, Sir! Come on Puck!”
Emilia started running the way that Felt ran, leaving Subaru alone.
As Emilia was running after Felt her spirit appeared in front of her.
“Hi Puck! Why did you come out?”
“Mili, that guy in the alleyway.”
“Yeah, he was very kind, he didn’t even ask for something in return!”
“No, Mili, that guy…I don’t like him. His mind and his actions don’t match, it’s weird. You should stay away from him.”
“Puck! It's not nice to say that! You don’t know what he has been through and shouldn’t judge!”
“I don't know Mili, one thing I do know for certain is that he is nothing but trouble.”
* * *
Subaru himself was walking down the streets of the capital.
“Can I really take Elsa on my own? Yes I can, Subaru Natsuki can do anything. I just need to–ack!”
“Watch where you're going, your inability to use your eyes almost made me fall. Now please excuse me, I don’t have time for this right now.”
Before Subaru even knew what happened, the person had already disappeared into a crowd.
“Don’t worry, she did the same to me. People are really heartless nowadays!”
“Yeah…”
Subaru shifted his gaze to the person talking to him and was met with a familiar person wearing a helmet.
“Why did I happen to meet him?! The one person that is completely unpredictable.”
Keeping his composure and hiding his true feelings he acted normally, or at least tried his best.
“Let’s just act unsuspicious."
“Woah, you certainly have a weird outfit! Not that I’m judging!”
“Heh, you are not the first person to tell me that. Well, what are you doing here, you seem a little distressed.”
“Well, It’s nothing much, just thinking about something.”
“Must be something troublesome. *cough* Well, I came over to ask if you have seen a lady with orange hair and very large boobs. I’m searching for her.”
“Can’t say that I have. But I wish you good luck in finding her.”
“Alright, that was all, sorry if I troubled you.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Well, I wish you good luck, goodbye…Subaru.”
Subaru had a sense of joy as he said his next sentence. Looking directly into the eye-slit of the guy's helmet while saying it, certain that their eyes locked.
“You too, Al”
With that, Subaru turned around and blended in with the crowd.
“Well, so much for being unsuspicious… Doesn’t matter, as long as Emilia is alive it’s fine. Not that I love her or anything of the sort.I don’t know what Subaru Natsuki saw in her but I don’t see it . But I know that her death will trigger Puck's contract.” he thought to himself.
Subaru was already entering the slums as the sun was beginning to set behind the horizon. The slums were cold and empty, only broken up by the occasional person strolling by, giving him a snarky side-eye.But Subaru didn’t care what others thought of him, public perception was not important to the same Subaru that flooded Pristella.
“There it is, the loothouse.”
Going up and knocking on the door he found it locked.
“What business do you have here?!” A man's voice asked from the other side.
“I came to trade some stuff.”
“Sure, but don’t try anything funny. I’m warning you.”
He heard the door unlock and then open, revealing Rom.
Walking inside he saw Felt sitting on a chair, looking at the insignia in her hand.
“Hello, Felt.”
“I don’t greet strange–HEY! You’re that guy in the alleyway that knew my name! Are you here for my life?!”
“Calm down. I don’t want your life, quite the opposite. I want to make sure that you don’t die.”
“huh? What’s that supposed to mean! Do you think that I will die?!”
“Shush! Just know that your client is not who she claims to be.”
“Do you think that I will believe a random stranger? I’m not that stupid.”
Then another knock came on the door. And as Rom let her in, Subaru sat down next to Felt.
“And who are you?”
Elsa was right next to Subaru, her sadistic smile ever present.
“I’m not saying my name to strangers, especially to an assassin.”
“Wait what, you’re an assassin?!” Felt suddenly uttered in surprise.
“My, my, you know my true nature, am I really that popular?” Elsa said, pulling out 2 of her knives.
“I got some firsthand experience.”
“Really? Now that’s interesting because I never left a job unfinished.”
“Rom, stop!”
Subaru shouted at Rom, who was about to hit Elsa with his bat but stopped dead in his tracks when Subaru said.
“We don’t have a chance against her.”
Elsa’s smile seemed to grow even larger and more sadistic.
“If you already know you can’t beat me then what is your plan? Negotiations?”
“No, that won’t work either. I know that I’m not physically nor magically strong. But, that’s why I never come without a plan.”
“If your plan is to run then I will get to see your bowels earlier than expected.”
Elsa started licking the tip of one of her knives in a sadistic and horrifying display of insanity.
“I always wanted a younger sibling.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was an only child, I’m jealous that you have a sibling, even if it’s not biological. Meili is her name, right?”
Elsa’s smile finally diminished.
“While you’re here, she is unprotected, right? You’re not the only assassin in this area. Let’s just say that her mabeasts won’t save her.”
Elsa sensed an emotion she doesn’t often feel. One that she was not prepared for.
“If I were you then I would run.”
Elsa seemed to finally take control of her body and rushed away.
“See, she would have killed both of you if it wasn’t for me. All I ask in return is for you to give the insignia back to the owner, she will arrive shortly.”
Subaru then got up and walked away. Away from Felt. Away from Rom. Away from the loothouse. Away from everything.
“I did it. Now to the real goal. But where to get enough money?”
“Sir, excuse me but I happened to hear that you need money. I have an offer.”
“Huh, who are you?”
Subaru looked at a man he hadn’t seen in his life, not even with his memories returning could he remember this man. He was about as long as Subaru, just a tiny bit longer but he had bright blonde hair and an expensive looking outfit. He had a necklace and a bunch of rings probably worth a fortune.
“My name is Roverius. Nice to meet you!”
“Nice to meet you too. About that offer.”
“Yeah, 3 holy gold coins if you go to Mirula and give this letter to my parents.”
“Why don’t you do it? They are YOUR parents.”
“Hehe, I have my hands tied at the moment. Yes or no?”
“Sure, I’ll do it.”
“Here, don’t open it under any circumstance. And that letter has a tracker on it so I will know If you don’t deliver it. The consequence of that would not be pleasant. Now I have to go, good luck and everything, bye!”
Roverius disappeared from sight leaving Subaru alone with a letter and 3 holy golden coins.
“That was an interesting conversation. Well, I guess I’m doing another thing in Mirula.”
Subaru asked around until he found a carriage driver who could take him to Mirula.
“I guess it’s now that my adventure finally begins.”